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Solving Bobby Fischer

In the summer of 1972, the world’s attention was directed toward Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, to watch a championship chess match. Called “the Match of the Century,” the contest between the Russian champion, Boris Spassky, and the American challenger, Bobby Fischer, attracted that attention because of its cold war implications.

But people were also fascinated by the mercurial Fischer — a prototypical genius whose incessant demands and unpredictability were more associated with the behavior of a diva than with what one expects from a master of a demanding game of logic. Fischer won the match in brilliant style, setting off a wave of enthusiasm for the game, particularly in the United States. It seemed that a new age of chess, with a handsome, charismatic champion, had dawned.

The euphoria quickly dissipated, however, as Fischer retreated into a self-­imposed exile, spurning multimillion-dollar offers to play other matches and to endorse products. When he emerged for a rematch against Spassky 20 years later, spewing anti-American and anti-Semitic invective, the remaining milk of good will rapidly soured into disgust.

What happened? Why had such a promising talent veered so far off the path of fame and fortune?

Frank Brady tries to answer that question in his new book, “Endgame.” It ­traces Fischer’s life from his childhood in Brooklyn to his death in Iceland, the country that made him famous, in 2008.

Brady is in a unique position to write about Fischer, having published the first biography of him in 1965 (“Profile of a Prodigy: The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer”), when Fischer was on his rise to the world title. At the time, Brady was a friend and confidant of Fischer’s, and he could offer insights few others had.

Though Brady mentioned Fischer’s petulant outbursts in that book, he was, like many other American chess players and admirers, willing to overlook such conduct, ascribing it mostly to the character traits of an “artist.”

The intervening years, during which Fischer’s behavior became more and more erratic, have forced Brady to re­assess his perceptions, but not entirely. In an author’s note to “Endgame,” he writes, “We may not — and perhaps should not — forgive Bobby Fischer’s twisted political and antireligious assaults, but we should never forget his sheer brilliance on the chessboard.”

In undertaking this biography, Brady notes, he had access to new materials, including files from the F.B.I. and the K.G.B. (which identified Fischer as a threat to Soviet chess hegemony in the mid-1950s); the personal archives of Fischer’s mother, Regina, and his mentor and coach, Jack Collins; and even an autobiographical essay written by the teenage Fischer.

Photo

Bobby FischerCredit
Carl Mydans/Time & Life Pictures — Getty Images

The wealth of material allows Brady to describe many rich moments and details. When the 16-year-old Fischer was feeling down at the 1959 Candidates Tournament in Yugoslavia, which would select a challenger for the world championship, he perked up after comparing himself to a character in “Alice in Wonderland.” “The Red Queen cried before she got a piece of dirt in her eye,” Fischer wrote. “I am in a good mood before I win all of my games.” In 1992, living in squalor and anonymity in Los Angeles, he was coaxed out of retirement by a letter from a 17-year-old Hungarian girl that began: “I would like to sell you the world’s best vacuum cleaner! Now that I have your interest, turn the page.”

Brady is best when relating such anecdotes, but stumbles at times. He occasionally loses the thread of the narrative, particularly during some of the tournaments and matches. Since there is no record of Fischer’s chess career in the book, it is almost impossible to follow what happened. Also, many sections feel like short essays stitched together.

At several points, rather than rehashing events, Brady bows out, in effect telling readers to seek information elsewhere. On the negotiations for a 1975 world championship match with Anatoly Karpov, which ultimately collapsed and led Fischer to resign the title, Brady writes, “The story of the machinations employed to enable the Fischer-Karpov world championship match to take place are enough to fill a separate book — and have! — but the details are hardly dramatic in retrospect.”

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The real purpose of this book, though, is to get underneath Fischer’s skin and try to explain the roots of his aberrant behavior. In this, Brady is partly successful.

Regina Fischer was Jewish, but not an observant Jew. Though Bobby’s birth certificate listed Hans Gerhardt Fischer as his father, it seems more likely that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist, was his biological father. Despite being Jewish, Fischer was not brought up so. In fact, for much of his childhood, he was left to his own devices.

In this environment, Brady writes, Fischer became interested in the Radio Church of God (later the Worldwide Church of God) while listening to broadcasts in the ’50s by Herbert W. Armstrong, the church’s founder. Armstrong promoted a strict, minimalist doctrine that included observing the Sabbath. It appealed to Fischer’s desire for logic and order and eventually formed the foundation of his own views.

The hold that this exposure to religion had on Fischer is apparent in one of the most startling moments in the book. Brady recounts how for years Fischer carried a blue cardboard box with him wherever he went, but would never say what was in it. One day, at a restaurant, Fischer went to the men’s room, and his companion — it seems to have been Brady, though he does not say — slid the cover off to find not a chess book or chess-related paraphernalia, but a gold-embossed copy of the Bible.

In later years, as Fischer grew apart from the church, especially after he won the title and the church started to siphon off some of his winnings, he began reading ever more virulent writings, including, most tellingly, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Brady has set himself an impossible task: explaining behavior that is, at its core, irrational. And the author is not a psychiatrist. In the end, the book throws light on Fischer’s motivations, but it cannot fully explain them.

Brady has written other biographies, including one about Barbra Streisand, who attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time Fischer did and had a bit of a crush on him. But Fischer has been Brady’s greatest obsession. He was awe-struck by Fischer’s ability at a game Brady loved, but he was also horrified and disgusted by his actions and words away from the chessboard. Brady, borrowing a line used to describe Paul Morphy, America’s other great chess champion, has often called Fischer the pride and the sorrow of chess. After reading “Endgame,” you understand why that description perfectly fits Brady’s feelings about his subject.

ENDGAME

Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall — From America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

By Frank Brady

Illustrated. 402 pp. Crown Publishers. $25.99.

Dylan Loeb McClain is the chess columnist for The Times.

A version of this review appears in print on February 13, 2011, on Page BR24 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Solving Bobby Fischer. Today's Paper|Subscribe